Page 56 of The Last Vendetta

“What do?—”

I growled at the ringtone. “I hate that thing.” I answered, though, too duty-bound to think twice.

“Where the hell are you going?” Gio asked as a greeting.

I rolled my eyes. “Out of town,” I replied.

“The fuck you are,” he replied.

I glanced at Giulia, who raised her brows at the speaker call.

“Dean said you were taking off for some personal time,” Gio said.

“I am.” It was a personal matter to be with Giulia, even if we were working on finding Luka’s killer.

“You don’t have personal time anymore,” he argued. “You can’t take off and act like you don’t have any responsibilities anymore.”

“I can. And I will. I don’t need to micromanage everything like Luka did.”

“He didn’t micromanage anything. He led our Family. He oversaw the men.”

“And I can do the same while letting them actually do what is expected of them.” I shook my head. “I’m not discussing this. You told me to step up and replace Luka. I am. I don’t use the same supervision methods as he did.”

“Oh, sure. I’m supposed to just trust you, huh?”

“Yes.” Because I’m your fucking son, remember?

“You’ve never given me a reason to trust you so freely before.”

“You also never gave me a chance to prove myself before.” I didn’t want to get into this with Giulia listening. I wasn’t worried about confidentiality. I simply preferred to focus on anything other than Gio. “Since Luka’s death, I've seen to every goddamn thing you tasked me with. Talk to me when I fuck up and you have proof of this incompetence you think I’m prone to.”

I hung up, no longer in the mood to let him ruin another moment with Giulia. It wasn’t like I could take her on a date or be seen with her in any romantic sense. I’d be in trouble if I were caught near her in the capacity of friendship, too. If going out of town to seek a woman who was potentially hiding was all I could use as a reason to get away with her, then I wanted to embrace every second of it.

“Hasn’t been easy, huh?” she asked. “Stepping up to do what Luka did?”

I shook my head and rubbed my hand over my face. “No.”

“I bet not. Uncle Dario was the same as you. The spare younger brother. But when he was injured and rendered unable to have children…” She shrugged. “I think in a way, he was relieved to escape all that duty.”

Yet, her uncle was involved in the wake of Rocco Acardi’s death. He’d sent Giulia on a harebrained mission to spy for information. It made me wonder whether he knew she was seeking out Cecilia now.

“I don’t mind the duty. I grew up knowing I was the backup.”

“Were you ever close with Luka or your father?”

I shook my head. “Not at all. Gio focused on him and has only ever paid attention to me when I had to step up. Gio is a businessman through and through.”

“Unlike my father. He delegated as much as he could, much to my mother’s distaste. She likes power, wielding it and hoarding it. She always wanted to know who was where and what power was at play.”

I nodded. “That sounds about right.”

She huffed.

“Gio told me the same thing. She’s too calculating.”

“She definitely is.” As she turned to face me fully, I strained to keep my eyes on the road.

“Has she ever tried to calculate something with you? With your Family?”

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